Tallying Election Results to Take 4 Days
Tallying of results for the 2022 general elections will take at least four days. This is because of the process the Fijian Election Office is guided by known as the Flush Process.
This is how flush process is carried out:
The data or the provisional result is entered manually by an officer into the system. Then it is sent to another allocated officer who would then print the result, spontaneously deleting the results that have been printed from the system (Flash Process). The result on the projected screen should then show zero votes entered.
“So, when the results are printed that’s the print out you get,” Mr Saneem.
“Those candidates that did not get any votes will have a zero next to their names.”
To avoid human error the Fijian Elections Office has also set up mitigation factors.
“We do double blind data entry where two people enter the data, not only one,” Mr Saneem said.
“Two people will enter it, so someone will enter it, then it will go to another person randomly assigned
to enter it, once the second person has entered it and if it matches, then a third person cures it then it will go to the system.
“If there’re any discrepancies, the system will not accept it, it will go back for re-entry.
“When it goes back for re-entry, it will have to be re-entered two times.
“So if you go back for re-entry, maybe the first person has made an error, the system will pick it up from the second person, it will go back and it will start from scratch again.”
He said this was the reason it would take four days.